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| The Former Types of Qualifications |
Though systems of higher education are originated in Ancient Greece, China, and India, the notion of postgraduate education depends on the system of awarding degrees at various levels of study, and can be drawn to the workings of the European medieval universities.
The students of universities used to study six years for a Bachelor degree and up to twelve years in addition for a master's degree or doctorate. The first six years students were taught the faculty of the arts, which included the study of the seven liberal arts such as arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music theory, grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The most important subject was logic. Finishing the studing for a Bachelor of Arts, the student could select one of three faculties as law, medicine, or theology in which to follow master's or doctor's degrees. The most prestigious and the most difficult area of study was Theology.
The degrees of master or magister and doctor were for a while equal in Paris universities and latter in Bologna universities. At Oxford and Cambridge the difference was between the Faculties of Law, Medicine, and Theology and the Faculty of Arts. The name of Doctor was used for the Master. This is because theology was thought to be the main of the subjects so the doctorate came to be thought of as higher than the master's.
The main meaning of the higher, graduate degrees was to teach as "doctor" comes from the Latin "docere", meaning "teach".
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